Remember how Mark Shuttleworth justified moving the window titlebar widgets to the left by claiming the space freed up on the right side could now be used for something else? On his blog, Shuttleworth unveiled what, exactly, Ubuntu's plans are: window indicators, or 'windicators'. In a nutshell, it comes down to having a tray area in every window.

This is all very nice as far as it goes but the danger with any 'new' design is that it blindly throws away value that exists in current designs simply because the designers don't know all of the real uses of current designs, or because they discount the value of those uses.

For example, the three listed uses of the status bar are indeed three common uses. A fourth use that is not mentioned: Non-transient status information, such as current page and line number in a text editor/word processor. You cannot put that kind of data usefully into an icon and hiding it behind a submenu makes it nearly useless. This example is real and represents the tip of a dangerous iceberg which one risks hitting any time a radical design decision is made.

You cannot simply say "This is a great design because the ten problems I set out to solve, I solved." You can create a decent system that way but you are not likely to create a system that is good enough that it should replace the status-quo (this is also the mistake, incidentally, made by people who try to revise the FHS by fiat). In order to be as good as the existing system you must address *all* uses of the existing system, especially the uses you do not replicate well or are inferior in your system. Talking up why it's good is fine but talking about how it deals with the areas where it is weak is far more valuable.

Until someone sits down and works through how it fails I do not see that you can suggest that it's worth writing even one line of code. If the design doesn't stand up to criticism even on paper then there is probably a serious flaw with it. Again, that may be okay for a brand new system but you're agitating for replacing something that already exists. The burden of proof is on *you*.

I don't think Ubuntu has the power to coerce developers to make use of an Ubuntu-specific API for an Ubuntu-specific UI element of questionable value to anyone and no value to non-Ubuntu users. Either push this idea at the toolkit level and adopt it when it's ready or be prepared to maintain a hefty patchset.